Saturday, May 11, 2013

Think Twice Before Buying Another Apple Product

Last year, I bought an iPad 3 for my wife. A couple of days ago, the iPad started rebooting every 5 minutes or so, rendering it unusable. It kept doing that despite my attempts to reset it to factory settings. I don't know what caused it. It may or may not have started acting strangely after the most recent iOS update (I'm not sure because my wife is the one who uses it). Anyway, I brought it to an Apple store and the 'genius' told me that it was just over the 1-year warranty period and there's nothing they can do to fix it. They did not even bother to try.

Now, literally, yes the warranty is only 1 year. But we sure as heck did not spend $829 + tax for an iPad thinking it will be totally unusable after 1 year, and I don't think anyone who buys one expects that either. I mean if I buy a cheap made in China product from eBay and it fails after a few months or a year, I sort of expect that. That's why they're cheap. But is Apple saying that their products are in the same category as those disposable products? Seriously? Perhaps they should do a better job of publicizing that.

The thing is, we have bought an iPad before (1st gen). It worked well and continues to work well, that's why we got the iPad 3. I also have an iPhone 4 that still works. But after this sour experience, I can't trust Apple's quality anymore for its new products. Perhaps their factory started producing things a little too fast, or under a little too much time pressure, or with less trained workers, or perhaps with slightly cheaper materials. Whatever it is, I have lost faith in Apple products. To me, I see it now as just another electronics company that produces disposable electronics, and therefore does not deserve the price premium that Apple demands for its products.

To Apple's credit, the 'genius' did offer the 'opportunity' to buy another iPad 3 for $299 + tax. I sure as heck didn't want to buy another one, but what choice did I have? I either had to take the ~$900 loss or spend the $299 and hope that it would not also fail. They told me that the replacement was brand new not refurb. But they just handed me the unit with no box (they did not take it out of the box in front of me). So I have no way of knowing if they were telling the truth. And the warranty on the replacement was going to be just 90 days not the 1 year warranty for new units. So, yes we could be out another $300 eventually. Who knows. I do know that I will probably not buy another Apple product again.